Sermon -Thanksgiving/Day of Repentance 2020 - Luke 12:35-48

 As I sat down to put this Thanksgiving service together, I was reading through the usual assigned Bible passages and hymn suggestions. Truly, after reflecting on them, we do have every reason to give thanks to God, even during 2020! He has so richly blessed us in this land. Our nation is among the richest of peoples to have ever lived and prospered. Our land is incredibly productive and fruitful, our houses are strong and warm, and it’s not uncommon to live to 70 or even 80 or 90. We have luxuries and toys available to most people that not even kings and queens of could have dreamt up. Even during a global pandemic, the vast majority of people who contract it survive.

Not only has God blessed us with temporal gifts, but even more so with spiritual gifts. Here in our country, up until lately, we’ve had unrivaled freedom throughout the world to live and act as Christians. Here in the Lutheran church, God has blessed us with His pure word and unadulterated sacraments. We have heaven on earth right here, in a sanctuary within minutes of where we live. We are indeed blessed by God, just as Jesus said: “Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions.” 

 But in light of the events of this past year, which we’re still in the midst of, a typical Thanksgiving service felt a bit out of place and out of touch with reality. Prior to Thanksgiving becoming a national holiday in 1870, a few years after the Civil War, it was simply an occasional church festival celebrated during years with particularly good harvests. 

But something the church however did have every year on the last Friday of the church year, which is typically Black Friday today, was a day of humiliation and prayer. The end of the church year is a wake up call for Christians to be ready for judgement day. How is a Christian made ready for the coming of Christ? By repenting and praying, of course.

Just as in 1861, the first year of the Civil War, our nation held a day of supplication and prayer, so we ought to do the same today. Our sins justly anger God, therefore let us repent, and give thanks for Christ’s forgiveness.

You understand, we have abused God’s blessings. We’re like the servant who said to himself: “‘My master is delayed in coming.’” Then we like that servant “begin to beat the male and female servants, and to eat and drink and get drunk.” We’re like those prophets who “have smeared whitewash for them, seeing false visions and divining lies for them, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD,’ when the LORD has not spoken.” We’re like the people of the land who “have practiced extortion and committed robbery. They have oppressed the poor and needy, and have extorted from the sojourner without justice.”

As a nation, we’ve embraced a vast multitude of sins which identify us. Broken homes, drunkenness, sex outside of marriage, drug addictions, sodomy, abortion, obscene talk, and corruption at the highest levels.

We may live in a land of prosperity, we may live in a nation which God has richly blessed with temporal goods, but we’ve abused that gift. In our wealth, instead of growing in generosity, we’ve only grown in greed and selfishness. Our wealth all belongs to God, and it should always be used in service of God. Yet, as our wealth grew, so did our houses and toys, while our churches and Lutheran schools have closed or decayed. 

We live in a nation rich in freedom to practice our Lutheran faith. But instead of living like Christians, we’ve become nearly indistinguishable from the world. We’ve had the freedom to go to church without punishment, so we stopped going of our own free will. We have in our Lutheran church the pure Word of God and the blessed sacraments, the best hymns and the purest form of the Divine Service, yet we throw it all away so that we can try to imitate some big-box brand-name mega-church which doesn’t even claim to be Christian. 

Because of our sins, God sends us calamity. Wars, rebellions, storms, pandemics, and tyranny are not random acts of tragedy in an otherwise good world, but are expressions of God’s wrath over our vile sins in the midst of an evil world. We don’t want to believe what the prophet Amos said, but it’s true: “Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?” The sadness through this past year has come because we are sinners and deserve every bit of evil we experience in this world, and more.

But then we’re like the self-righteous Pharisee, “God, I thank you that I’m not like those sinners.” We’re like Pilate, washing our hands, claiming it’s not our fault. It’s not my fault there’s a virus and riots in our nation! I don’t deserve this!

But the truth is we do deserve this, and in fact we deserve much worse. So what do we do? We repent. God says “I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none.” God’s looking for us Christians to stand in the gap, to stand in the hole in the wall between God and the world, and admit that the guilt is our own. He’s looking at us to plead with Him and beg forgiveness. 

God calls Christians the salt of the earth. Salt preserves things. It’s why they used to have salt barrels where the meat was kept from going bad. As salt, God is expecting us to preserve the world, a world that is filled with sin and malice. The reason God blesses the world so richly is because there are Christians living here! 

Your job is to preserve the world. It’s not surprising that the world is evil. The world doesn’t know God and His will for us. Of course the world isn’t going to live like christians, because they’re not Christians. But we are. We know God and His will. We are His servants and we’re supposed to be His salt in this world. 

But if salt has lost its saltiness, what good is it but to be thrown out. “And that servant who knew his master’s will but did not get ready or act according to his will, will receive a severe beating.” Therefore, let us repent in sackcloth and ashes! Let us stop pretending that everything is okay in the world. Let us stand in the gap, in the breach in the wall, let us kneel in sorrow and contrition and take responsibility for the problems in our world. “It’s my fault and I’m sorry.”

Only in repentance is there hope. Since there were none found to stand in the gap, the Father sent the Son, Jesus, to stand in the gap for us. Upon Him was laid the sins of the world, and you were forgiven because He took your blame and said “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” The world is in shambles because of us and our sins, and Jesus takes the fall for us. 

“The blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” Therefore, my little children, as St. John calls us: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” That’s something to give thanks for this Thanksgiving! “We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins.” Repent and believe that God loves you and forgives you, for all this mess.